the mark
Drawn on a grid, then tested where it will live
At the size it will actually be used and at the size it will actually be seen — a browser tab, a stitched shirt, a sign across a car park. A mark that only works on a slide is not finished.
04
Graphic design — one language, four places
Before an interface becomes interactive, it still has to communicate. Graphic design is where I explore that foundation through type, colour, composition and identity. It is explored on its own or alongside a build — the one discipline here that does not need a website attached to it, and the one with real commissioned work behind it.
- Covers
- Logo design, visual identity, advertising design, campaign visuals.
- Taken on
- Standalone, or with a build. Nothing here is treated as an add-on to something bigger.
- Approach
- Scoped before it starts, iterated as it goes, finished rather than abandoned.
- Directions
- Two to three explored, one taken to a finish. Real revision rounds on the one chosen.
- Rights
- Source files and full usage rights are part of any commissioned identity work.
the system
A logo is one part. This is the rest of it.
A simple list would say logo, palette, typography, layouts. That tells you what exists and nothing about whether it holds together. So here is the same system described the other way round — six things, and the last one is the difference between a picture and an identity.
the palette
Colour with the ratios written down
Contrast checked rather than eyeballed, and the pairs that fail recorded as failing. This is the sheet that stops a brand colour carrying body text on a brand's own website and quietly failing.
the type
Which faces, which weights, and what each is for
Named, properly licensed, and with a scale somebody can follow. The second weight nobody licensed is the most common way a new identity falls apart in month three.
the pattern
Something to fill a surface with that is still the brand
Generated from the mark rather than bought separately, so a bag, a wall or a background is recognisably the same brand without repeating the logo eleven times.
the applications
Ten pieces, recognisably one thing
Without being the same picture ten times. A billboard, a shop sign, a story, a menu, a letterhead — variation inside a system, which is only possible because there is a system.
the rights
The part you notice years later
Exclusive, worldwide, permanent usage rights granted in writing, and the source files in the format they were made in rather than a flattened export. A right nobody names does not transfer.
what arrives
Nothing is drawn twice
An identity sheet is made in one order, and every step after the first is checked against the one before it. That is what makes six surfaces one brand rather than six drawings that happen to share a colour.
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01
The construction
The grid, the angles and one stroke width. Boring on purpose: every decision that follows is checked against it.
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02
The mark
Two strokes on the grid. A mark that does not survive as two strokes is not rescued by colour later.
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03
The palette, measured off the mark
Five values and the proportion each is allowed to take — so the brand colour is a ratio, not a preference.
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04
The type, on the same baselines
A display face and a working face, set on the construction's own lines rather than beside them.
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05
The pattern the diagonal generates
The mark's own angle, repeated. Texture for any surface that needs filling, and it cannot clash with the mark it came from.
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06
The surfaces, widest first
A billboard, a fascia, a story, a menu, a cup, a bag. None of them is a new drawing — that is the point, and it is what the sheet is for.
how it is taken on
On its own, or with a build
This is the one discipline here with real work behind it, and it stands on its own. No website has to be attached, and it is not treated as an extra line inside a larger project.
It travels the other way too, and only for a reason visible in the material itself. If a mark fails on screen — a brand colour that fails contrast the moment it carries text, no version for a dark background, a wordmark that dissolves at sixteen pixels — that is an observable problem, and it is the only circumstance where identity work belongs inside a conversation about a website. If none of those is true of a given brand, it does not come up.
Where a build is part of it, the identity and the site are made together rather than handed between two people. The websites page describes that half.
what I test for
What is part of the build, and what I leave for another project
Same size, same weight, both columns. The right-hand one is where a design project usually goes wrong, because most of it is work somebody else does better and everyone assumes is included.
Part of the build
- Two to three directions explored, one taken to a finish. Not forty thumbnails — that is a way of keeping the choice deliberate rather than exhausting.
- The mark in every format it will actually need, including the awkward ones: very small, one colour, on a dark ground, cut into vinyl.
- A colour system with contrast checked and the ratios recorded, so nobody has to re-measure later.
- A type system — which faces, which weights, and what each one is for.
- A one-page usage sheet: what the mark may do, what it may not, and which colours pass on which backgrounds.
- Source files in the format they were made in.
- Full exclusive worldwide usage rights, granted in writing.
- Advertising layouts and campaign artwork where that is the job.
- Real iteration, not a first draft called final.
Outside this exploration
- Trademark searching and registration. That is a lawyer's work, flagged when it is needed rather than improvised.
- Naming.
- Packaging engineering — dielines, materials, physical print specification.
- Print production and media buying. The artwork is designed and the files handed over; the print run and the placement are their own step.
- Photography, illustration and stock licences.
- Typeface licences. The faces and their cost get named; the licence itself is bought separately.
- Ongoing design work after a build is finished, unless it is its own engagement.
- Any claim about recognition, recall or what a mark does to sales — those are not measurable from a portfolio piece.
the question
The one worth asking properly
A mark can be generated automatically in minutes. What does construction and system-thinking actually buy?
A generated mark is a picture, and most of the time the picture is genuinely fine. What it skips is everything a picture is about to run into once it has to survive outside a slide.
A brand colour that fails contrast the first time it carries text on a website. A second weight of the typeface nobody licensed. A version for a dark background that does not exist. Each of those is cheap to decide at the start and expensive to discover later — and each is a craft lesson, not a sales pitch.
So the comparison worth making is not one mark against another. It is what happens the first time somebody else — a printer, a sign maker, the next designer — has to use it without being able to ask. That is what construction is for, and it is what the sheet above is showing.
commissioned work
Three sectors, three palettes, one method
This is the one area here with real commissioned work behind it. The names are on the sheets because on identity work the name is the deliverable — it is the one place on this site where a client appears, and it appears because you cannot show a mark without showing whose it is. These three share nothing except the method behind them.
Each sheet is one system taken all the way to the surfaces it has to live on. None of the three shares a face, a palette or a grid with either of the others.
the same eye, on screens
Three art directions from the ten builds
The ten websites in the portfolio carry ten separate art directions, which is the same muscle used on a different surface. These three are named rather than left to the index, because a claim about range is worth making checkable: each one solves a different art-direction problem, and none of them looks like the other two.
Restraint, 2025
Arke Estates
Four colour values, three type weights and a great deal of deliberate empty space. Taking decisions away and having the page still hold is the hardest of the three.
Type and grid, 2021
Ember & Oak
An editorial print magazine that happens to serve dinner. Composition and typographic hierarchy carry the whole identity, with no mark doing the work for them.
A saturated system, 2023
NEONFRAME
High contrast and acid colour held consistent across a whole interface — the opposite discipline to restraint, and just as easy to get wrong.
See all ten builds — if you want to know whether the range is real.
graphic design
One system, or one mark
Three sheets of commissioned work sit above and the ten builds carry the same art-direction muscle onto a different surface. If what you have is a mark that fails on screen, or a brand that has never had a system written down, that is worth a conversation.